English Grammar - Nouns

A noun is a person, place, thing, or idea.

Examples:

This girl is nice.

I like this book.

We will visit Paris next year.

There are 2 types of nouns: Common & Proper Nouns

Common nouns are any person, place, or thing. Common nouns are not capitalized: a policeman, that newspaper

Proper Nouns are the name of a special person, place, or thing. Proper nouns are capitalized: Dallas Officer Walker New York Times.


Most nouns change their form to indicate the plural by adding "-s" or "-es".

For examples:

one book -> ten books

a worker -> many workers

a city -> many cities

There are nouns that change completely the form when indicating the plural such as:

a child -> children

a foot -> feet


Possessive nouns are used to show possession (owning, or having).

Example:

The dog's collar is too large.


The word "dog's" is the possessive noun. It tells you that the noun "collar" belongs to the dog. The dog owns, or possesses the collar. Add 's to the end of a singular noun to make it possessive.
Add only the apostrophe (') to the end of a plural noun that ends with an s.

For example:

My bothers' names are David and Christopher.


Nouns can be countable or uncountable.

A countable noun is a noun with both a singular and a plural form, and it names anything (or anyone) that you can count. You can make a countable noun can be made plural and attach it to a plural verb in a sentence. Countable nouns are the opposite of non-countable nouns and collective nouns.

for examples:

dog, cat, job, umbrella, notebook, book

Before countable nouns you can use "a" or "an".

A non-countable noun is a noun which does not have a plural form, and which refers to something that you could not usually count. A non-countable noun always takes a singular verb in a sentence. Non-countable nouns are similar to collective nouns, and are the opposite of countable nouns.

for examples:

music, furniture, water, news etc...



Here are some more resources on nouns:



http://www.arts.uottawa.ca/writcent/hypergrammar/nouns.html

http://www.englishclub.com/grammar/nouns.htm